Adolescents' perceptions of and feelings about control and responsibility in their lives.

This paper describes a hypothesis-generating study which merges a review of past conceptualizations and research (done mainly with children) with the results of a semistructured interview designed to distinguish between perceptions of control and responsibility in adolescents. Eight female and eight male freshmen and seniors from a middle-class high school in suburban Virginia were interviewed concerning their views and feelings of control and responsibility. They also rated themselves on a scale of 0 to 10 in eight areas of their lives on how much in control and how responsible they felt for things that happened in those areas and, in general, how satisfied they were with their lives.